At the moment Unity Tech release new versions of Unity with new features alongside a new basic free version of Unity. This means that the free version of Unity is in some ways actually better than the previous pro version that somebody had paid good money for.
But if you’re like me and don’t need all the new fancy features and yet would still like the (free) editor improvements and bug fixes, then you may be left feeling dumped and squeezed.
Wouldn’t it be better if any new version of Unity were to continue supporting the previous pro users? And just disable any new features that they haven’t actually payed for?.
I think you are mistaken. As far as I know, buying Unity Pro entitles you to all the updates it will have. So you will always have more features than the free users.
No, there is only one version of Unity. There is no “free version” of Unity, there is only Unity without a valid Pro license, in which case some of the included features don’t function.
Realistically, how do you think UT would stay in business if they gave everything away free? Also, separating “fancy” features and “editor improvements” is doomed to fail, since one person’s “must-have feature” is someone else’s “don’t need feature”. All other apps have upgrade fees, so I don’t know why you think Unity should be different. As it is, they already put out many free updates that other companies would charge for.
It wouldn’t be better; splitting development between 2.x and 3.x versions would be really annoying for everybody involved.
No, you pay an upgrade fee for major version updates (i.e., 2.x → 3.x, 3.x → 4.x).